Chapter 1 #2
“Here at the house,” she’d said, like that was obvious. “Sa’n pa ba?”
So that was that: the front door of the same two-story bahay na bato, chipped green paint and a permanent laundry line of faded T-shirts strung across the yard like bunting for a party no one had invited him to plan.
He had storyboarded this moment in his head for ten hours straight.
In the private cinema of his ego, his mother (played, obviously, by Susan Africa) lay on a bed, fragile but radiant, one hand reaching for him.
He’d rush to her side. There would be soft lighting, a Regine Velasquez ballad playing from some logistically implausible corner, and dust motes doing interpretive dance.
She would whisper, “Anak…thank you for coming home,” and all their accumulated resentment would dissolve in a tasteful montage.
Instead, the second he stepped through the door, somebody shrieked.
“Oh my God, Allan! It’s really you!”
Tita Gemma hurtled toward him like a floral torpedo. “You’ve gotten so fat!”
Before he could dodge, her fingers dug into his cheeks and pulled.
He yelped, dignity and facial structure both under assault. “Tita!”
“At least hindi siya ginugutom sa Manila,” she announced to the room, as if reporting breaking news to a studio audience.
The living room was controlled chaos.
The heavy narra dining table in the middle, the same one he’d eaten every meal on as a kid, scarred with decades of spoons and elbows, groaned under steaming rice porridge, pancit, puto, sapin-sapin, two plates of suman, and a tray of something that might be afritada or might be menudo, no one was willing to commit either way.
The ceiling fan shuddered overhead like it was praying for overtime pay.
Around the table, in full floral armor and rosary beads, sat his mother’s closest friends and self-appointed security council: Tita Becky, Tita Yolanda, and Tita Gemma. Half the barangay called them the BEBES: Mga Banal na Babae ng Barangay Espiritu Santo. Holy women. In their own minds, anyway.
In the corner, a scruffy brown dog with mismatched eyes and one ear permanently folded down lay sprawled on the cool tiles. The instant Allan stepped in, the dog perked up, trotted over, sniffed his shoes and his bag, then went unerringly for his crotch.
“There’s Oryo,” Tita Gemma said fondly. “The barangay’s matchmaker.”
“Oreo? Like the cookie?” Allan asked, scratching the dog’s head.
“No,” Tita Yolanda said, crossing herself on principle. “Like Oriol. The monster from the Ibalon epic. But he’s sweet. Sometimes.”
The dog, apparently pleased with his mythological branding, licked Allan’s hand enthusiastically.
“He really showed up!” Tita Becky crowed, smacking Tita Yolanda’s arm. “I told you, he’d never leave his mother.”
With the drama of a dethroned pageant queen, Tita Yolanda pulled a folded bill from her bra and slapped it into Becky’s palm.
“Forgive me, Lord, for betting on a son’s abandonment issues.”
“Hello,” Allan said weakly. “I’m right here, po. Standing right here.”
“Us too, anak,” Tita Gemma said, already ladling porridge into a bowl like carbs could solve ten years of absence. “Sit down. Eat.”
“I—uh—san po si Mama?” he asked, scanning the room. “Is she okay?”
Before anyone could answer, a familiar scent drifted in from the hallway: ylang-ylang, menthol liniment, baby powder, and that faint graphite smell of freshly sharpened Mongol pencils.
“All right, enough noise,” his mother’s voice called. “You’ll scare the neighbors.”
She came in from the kitchen, balancing a bowl of seaweed salad in one hand and swatting a fly with the other.
Mrs. Corazon Rosario Talan Reyes. Former science teacher. Retired principal. Terror of San Andres National High School. Legend of every last-minute quiz.
She looked exactly the same.
Same neat bun. Same floral duster. Same assessing frown that could make a whole classroom sit up straighter. There was a tiny drag on one side of her mouth now, a fraction of a limp in her step, but the energy was unmistakable.
He crossed the room quickly and bent to take her hand for mano, the old habit surfacing before he’d even decided to let it.
“Mano po,” he said, pressing her knuckles briefly to his forehead.
“Good to know you still remember,” she said dryly, but her fingers held his for one beat longer than necessary before letting go.
She set the bowl on the table. “Have you eaten?” she asked, in the same tone she used to ask if he’d finished his lab report.
“I’m still full, Ma,” he lied. His stomach growled on cue, loud enough that Tita Gemma laughed.
She scanned him head to toe, checking for disease, disrespect, and poor life choices. After a heartbeat, she gave a single, clipped nod. “Fine.”
He waited for we missed you so much, or look how fat you got, or even why only now.
Instead, she turned to rearrange the puto.
“Ma,” he tried again, more carefully, “Tita said you had a stroke?”
The room did that Filipino teleserye thing where everyone pretended to keep moving but stopped breathing.
“Mini stroke,” she said, still not looking at him. “The doctor said just rest. This”—she gestured around at the porridge army—“is resting.”
Resting, apparently, looked like catering for a small parish.
His entire meticulously rehearsed teleserye collapsed. No frail mother. No trembling hand. No anak, thank you for coming home.
Just Cora. Functional. Mildly irritated. Refusing, as always, to be the main character in his movie.
“Go to your room,” she said, eyes on the tablecloth. “Rest. You’re tired.”
“Okay, po,” he echoed. His body agreed before his pride could argue.
He dragged his duffel down the hallway. The paint had peeled more. The family photos had multiplied. Above the console table, his lolo laughed forever from a bamboo scaffold, one hand steadying a giant painted Nora Aunor.